My current opinion on carbohydrates and health issues comes from Good Calories, Bad Calories, a very well-written, exhaustively researched book by Gary Taubes. It certainly doesn't prove that carbohydrates are the only health hazard in the world, but it makes a good case for carbs playing a big part in the onset of the the so-called "diseases of civilization," such as diabetes, clogged arteries, cancer, and Alzheimers. Time and again, scientists have found that these diseases manifest in populations when processed grains and sugar are introduced into their diets, and the percentage of their calories from carbohydrates rises compared to that of other macronutrients (ie protein and fat).

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If you remove sugar and heavily-processed grains from a diet, it's very hard to get adequate calories and nutrition from vegetables.

I need somewhere between 2000 and 2300 calories a day to keep my body from wasting away. Besides sugar, grains, and soy (which also needs to be fairly processed before it's edible), it is difficult for me to get that many calories by just eating plants. I could probably survive as a lacto-ovo vegetarian, but I'm not sure how I would make nutritional ends meet without animal products (I'll entertain ideas, though).

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Veggies have a larger (negative) health impact than meat.

I'm not saying all veggies have a negative health impact- salad greens and other low-calorie plants are basically water, a little fiber, and some vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, all of which are neutral-to-good for the human body. However, wheat and legumes, which are the vegetables that most vegetarians rely on for the bulk of their macronutrients, are fairly high in carbohydrates (and anti-nutrients), and low in protein and fat, the exact sort of diet that has been implicated in the rise of novel "Western" diseases in indigenous populations.

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And, America has no shortage of calories. Oh I forget America is the center of the world!

I'm sorry, that should have been "the people on these boards, as well as most in the developed world, have no shortage of calories." Cheap, calorically dense food like spam, beans, lard, tortillas, and peanut butter means that starvation is no longer a big concern for most of us, so arguments about how many calories an acre of land can produce (corn and wheat win this one) fall short.

VK- no need for a pissing contest ever. I think the cool thing about these boards is that everyone is free to explore their own paths to personal health.

I'm doing great. I didn't go into it with any major goals or expectations, other than thinking that it would make me healthier, and I'm pretty pleased. Current highlights, 4-6 weeks in:

-I have lost about ten pounds in the last three months, and I'm probably down from 15+% bodyfat to around 10-12% (six-pack is forming ). The weight loss I don't really care about, and am actually trying to reverse over the next month, but the bodyfat loss is nifty.

-Weekly grocery bills have stabilized at about $40, which is divided among steak, eggs, and heavy cream.

-My diet doesn't taste flavorless to me (I find it delicious), but on an absolute scale, I consume far fewer flavors, and with much less intensity, than before. I wonder about an overlap in mechanism between Seth's various AS theories and the way I eat.

-I think I may have disconnected my blood sugar from my food intake, ie, prolonged periods of fasting don't make me hypoglycemic. Basically, I can go 12+ hours without food, and feel neither hunger nor a negative effect on physical/athletic/mental performance. I need to test this, probably with one of those monitors diabetics use, but if my hunch is correct, it would be awesome.

-When I go out, I don't stay strictly paleo. I probably eat about one heavily omnivorous meal a week, as my social schedule dictates. Last weekend, it was a burger, fries, and a beer. I prefer steak, chicken, etc because they don't come with bread, but a lot of times the burger is the cheapest thing on the menu, and I think I'm healthy enough to handle it.

Monky, I still don't agree with your statements. And since the state we leave the planet in to the next generations doesn't concern you, I won't even go there. But health doesn't rely only on what you put in your mouth. If you think you'll be healthy by eating hormone, antibiotic, stress laden, grain-fed meat only, well, good luck. And be aware that physical activity, social interaction, a healthy lifestyle seem to be as or more important than what you eat. Even the way you eat is important, eating on the run stressing about other things is not the same as calmly sitting down and mindfully eating.

Gary taubes has been plenty discussed over here, while he may be right about a few things, you should also read the Blue Zones reports and the China study. You can't just say carbs/vegs are the root of all evils and ignore pollution, stress, sedentarism, hormones and antibiotics in meat, the awful conditions of poultry and livestock farms, their cruel stressful deaths, xenoestrogens, phtalates, toxins in general, side effects from medicines, etc etc... I think nothing you say has been proved except the sugar-diabetes link. You also forget the large communities who thrive in flexitarian-to-vegeterian eating. Also you are omitting that there are proteins in vegs. And fat. Some of your statements seem to be generally vague or incorrect, eg: wheat and legumes, which are the vegetables that most vegetarians rely on for the bulk of their macronutrients - is it really? what about rice? - and low in protein and fat, - the vegetarians I know don't eat only low protein/fat foods - nuts anyone? - could probably survive as a lacto-ovo vegetarian, but I'm not sure how I would make nutritional ends meet without animal products -Hah that's what I am, but the fact is, many vegans live to be very old and healthy, so. impossible it is not. - "the people on these boards, as well as most in the developed world, have no shortage of calories." - yeah, that's why we're here, and obesity is rampant in the developed world

Logged

A calorie is just a bug that lives in the closet and shrinks your clothes overnight

since the state we leave the planet in to the next generations doesn't concern you

Hmm. What about the state of our nutritional knowledge? Surely that will have a huge effect on well-being. By trying an unusual diet and telling us how well it works Monky is adding to our nutritional knowlege in a very clear and concrete way.

The sustainability is certainly the most difficult question about low-carb, let alone no-carb, eating. Assuming for the moment that a meat-centric diet is healthier than one based on grains, but knowing that grains yield far more calories per acre/dollar than animal products, how do we balance our food production? It's a doozy. On the one hand, having the ability to mitigate starvation and not using it feels like a betrayal of humanity. On the other, abundant calories coupled with poor health drive populations to reproduce and expand rapidly, and overpopulation has a very large impact on the environment.

The other question to consider is whether whole-foods vegetarianism is a sustainable practice. Figures comparing the food productivity of veggies compared to meat typically focus on the most high-calorie plants available, namely corn and wheat. If we're going to discuss a sustainable diet, we either need to decide to eat processed grains and sugars, or figure out whether we have enough land to grow adequate nutrition in unrefined carbohydrates.

Finally, there's the question of how much pasture is available in the world. Pastured livestock turns food humans cannot eat (grass) into food that we can eat, which should be a pretty sustainable practice in theory. Most other agriculture, meat and grain both, consumes a large amount of resources in making land fertile and/or feeding animals. Do we know which parts of the environmental impact from meat comes from meat processing, and which comes from the plants which need to be grown in order to feed the animals?

I don't have many of these answers, just wanted to point out that things aren't quite as simple as we might like them to be.

I suppose the ideal way around things would be to pack yourself up, move the the woods and hunt everything you eat. Very sustainable, and pretty low impact on the environment. But yes, I think if you were concerned, make sure the meat you eat is pasture raised, rather than factory farmed with grain, which is unnatural in so many ways.

I suppose the ideal way around things would be to pack yourself up, move the the woods and hunt everything you eat. Very sustainable, and pretty low impact on the environment. But yes, I think if you were concerned, make sure the meat you eat is pasture raised, rather than factory farmed with grain, which is unnatural in so many ways.

And buy from a local farmer or fisherman, if possible, not from a feedlot. Avoid the pollution, the corn-based feeds, the drugs, big business.

I don't claim to know the answers, but I'd like to post some follow up questions.

I can see how abundant calories could lead to increased reproduction and population, but why should poor health also increase reproduction and population? It seems to me that poor health would tend to decrease population.

I'm also not sure there's enough pasture in the world to serve as animal feed to raise enough meat to support our 6.5 billion (and growing) population. I haven't crunched the numbers, but it seems quite impossible to me (and this is not even considering whether there's sufficient land and water, as these are needed to support animals as well).

It seems like controlling our population is necessary before we can tackle any other issues. But this will never happen.

This could really be a chicken and the egg scenario. It seems equally plausible that when births increase to a high rate, fewer people survive to reproduction age because everyone has to survive on fewer resources. I can certainly visualize this being the case.

To have the reverse case be true would require that genetic expression is not random but rather due to genes plotting and conspiring. I cannot easily support such a theory, as I cannot believe that genes have consciousness and/or free will.

Given high mortality in young people and a random distribution of birth patterns, natural selection will weed out those genes (or groups of genes, or families, or strategies, etc) coding for low birth rates, and promote those coding for high birth rates.

An interesting discussion of why grass-fed cattle does not impact the environment as much as feed lot cattle, as well as some interesting comments on whether ruminant raising is really so bad for the environment when you consider food-raising holistically:

An interesting discussion of why grass-fed cattle does not impact the environment as much as feed lot cattle, as well as some interesting comments on whether ruminant raising is really so bad for the environment when you consider food-raising holistically: